


Don't Forget to Call

by ang3lba3



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cancer, Fluff and Angst, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-24
Updated: 2014-07-24
Packaged: 2018-02-10 06:10:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2014053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ang3lba3/pseuds/ang3lba3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’ll call you. When the procedure is done, I’ll call you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Forget to Call

**Twenty Three**

He didn’t mean to stare.

It wasn’t polite - or so he’d told Sam several times - but neither was letting your best friend think you were  _dead._

"Cas?" and he hated that his voice trembled, that he wanted to scream and shout until they called security but instead was dangerously close to crying.

"Hello, Dean."

 

**Twelve**

"He’s  _weird,”_ Dean whined.

Sammy just continued doing his best impression of an octopus, body curled around Dean’s and limbs sprawled over his brother.

"He didn’t know who Elmo was. Elmo, Sam! And he keeps telling me not to take the Lord’s name in vain, whatever the hell  _that_ means.” Dean shook his head.

The door opened and Cas was wheeled in by a nurse, looking paler than usual and clutching a puke bag. Despite his complaints, Dean softened immediately.

"Hey Cas. That show on Animal Planet you like is on."

"Hello, Dean."

 

**Twenty Three**

 

"You-" Dean managed to choke out before he had to turn away because  _fuck,_ but he couldn’t help it, he was sobbing and nothing would stop it now.

“Dean-” and that was Cas’ hand on his shoulder and  _nope,_ he thought he could do this but he couldn’t, he was too weak.

“I thought you were fucking - you let me think you were  _dead.”_ Dean gasped out. Then Cas was hugging him, and he fucking  _hated_ him right now but he clung to Cas anyways.

 

**Thirteen**

 

“You  _like_ him.” Sam said smugly, and Dean cuffed his brother on the back of the head. “You like  _like_  him.”

“Do not.” he grumbled.

Cas shifted restlessly from where he was asleep on his bed, and Dean caught himself before he started staring like the creeper Cas was. Usually he wouldn’t bother, would watch Cas mumble and frown and snore softly, but he had an irritating 9 year old with a big mouth in the room.

 

**Twenty Three**

 

After he’d cried himself out on Cas’ shoulder it only seemed appropriate to make him pay for lunch.

Questions screamed in the back of his head, one louder than all the others,  _why._ Instead -

“So. How’d you end up working back there?”

“I’m a volunteer.” Cas gave a small smile. “I work at the animal shelter, and sometimes we can bring baby animals to see the patients.”

“Sounds like it’d be good for morale.” Dean said, grinning. He still needed to punch Cas in the face a couple of times before they’d be even, but right now he mostly wanted to kiss him. “Always knew you’d do something with animals.”

“Whatever gave you that idea?” Cas asked dryly.

“Probably around the tenth time you cried when Sam snuck some kind of animal in.”

 

**Fourteen**

 

Dean was embarrassed  _for_ him.

Sam had started smuggling in puppies or kittens or hedgehogs or guinea pigs - anything small and easily concealed. Dean loved having them there, but Cas cried whenever he saw them. The first time he did Dean had been worried, but Cas hugged the small puppy to his chest and watched her with an awed expression until Sam had to hide her again.

Dean wasn’t really sure what they’d do without Sam - he was the only visitor they got regularly. Two years of rooming with Cas, and he’d never so much as heard the name of a family member. His dad showed up, Dean knew it, but he hadn’t seen his father in a year and a half. He knew it was hard for him, to see Dean like this.

Mostly because his dad had told him, breath stinking of alcohol, words harsh and loud and cutting deep. A nurse showed up with a security guard in tow, and that was the last time he’d seen John.

He didn’t miss him as much as he thought he should, but he had Sammy, and that was what really mattered.

 

**Twenty Three**

 

Cas stared at Dean’s hand and for a second he didn’t understand but then-

“It’s my dad’s. Fits now.” Dean said softly, rubbing the silver of the ring with his thumb. “Sam has mom’s.”

The tension that Dean hadn’t even noticed creeping into Cas’ face disappeared, and Dean not so subtly checked Cas’ hands.

Bare.

“My father, he -” Cas took a deep breath, eyes focused on his coffee. “He went missing several years ago. They declared him dead this month.”

Now would probably be a bad time to ask about the will, so Dean didn’t. Cas would tell him anyways.

“He left everything to - to  _me_.” Cas said, and for a second all Dean could see was a scared 17 year old boy.

 

**Fifteen**

 

Dean hated Valentine’s Day. It felt like a special kind of dig, TV covered in movies and shows and commercials where undying love was confessed. Mostly it was the sex that bugged him. He was sick and had a roommate, not  _dead_.

And neither was his roommate, now that he thought about it.

“Hey Cas?” Dean asked, glaring at the screen.

“Yes, Dean?”

“We’re dying.”

“No, we’re not, I wish you wouldn’t-” Cas began, starting along the paths of an old argument. Dean just waved a hand dismissively.

“I don’t wanna die a virgin.” Dean said bluntly, and let the silence consume the room until Cas breathed in sharply.

“Dean-”

“Great idea, I know.” he turned with a grin, and even if he didn’t know it yet that was the grin that would get him into countless pairs of pants - girl or boy. “You up for it?”

Cas’ heart stuttered out a few startled beats on the monitor before he nodded frantically.

 

**Twenty Three**

 

The ride to Dean’s apartment was silent, or mostly so. He had the radio on, of course, but he couldn’t bring himself to sing along - air tense and suffocating even with the windows rolled down.

Seeing Cas in his home made him dizzy, made him try and count how many times he’d imagined this.

Imagined Cas watching Animal Planet with wide eyes, Cas wearing hideous sweaters and t-shirts, Cas praying softly with head bowed and hands clasped before eating, Cas waking Dean up at ridiculous hours to drag him out to run as the sun rose-

“Dean?” Cas asked, looking even more awkward than usual, fidgeting uncomfortably in the ratty old trenchcoat that for some reason he still had.

Dean had great control of his mouth,  _fantastic_ control of his mouth. He’d received many compliments on the control he had over his mouth.

Which only made the way that he blurted out the truth to Cas more embarrassing.

“Look, I don’t even care anymore why you didn’t tell me Cas.” he said, words rushed and desperate and completely uncontrollable. “I just -”

And then his - usually completely in control  _what was wrong with him_ _-_  mouth was on Cas’. It was everything he’d remembered except memories couldn’t compare. Dean had no idea how many people he had kissed since that last chaste press of lips. He knew that none of them, not one, had come anywhere close to what Cas felt like. What Cas felt like now.

The reality of what he was doing hit him in the face and he stumbled backwards, hand reaching up to cover his gaping jaw like it could take that back. Cas hadn’t even told him he was  _alive,_ much less indicated he’d be okay with - with kissing.

 

**Sixteen**

 

12 years after the November 2nd that saw the death of one Mary Campbell Winchester, her husband choked to death in a pool of his own vomit beside her grave. The groundskeeper who discovered his corpse would swear for the rest of his life that he saw a young blond woman curled beside him, nightgown still despite the windy morning.

John was buried the same day as his wife was, and Dean couldn’t help but admire the symmetry of his death. He gripped Cas’ hand and Sam huddled into his side and John’s plain wooden coffin was lowered into the ground.

 

**Twenty Three**

 

“Did you mean that?” Cas asked, the same thing he’d asked for the last three minutes as Dean stared at him wordlessly. “Dean, did you  _mean it?”_

Of course he’d meant it. He’d meant it since he was fourteen years old and blurted it out before an operation, the automatic no homo at the end protecting his words. He’d meant it since he’d seen Cas cry over a baby parakeet, hands cupping the small bird ever so carefully as he sobbed. He’d always meant it.

 

**Seventeen**

 

“I’m ready, Dean.” Cas said gently and Dean shook his head because  _no_. “You can go.”

“You’re not giving up.” Dean choked out between sobs. “You can’t Cas, you have to live. I need you.”

“No you don’t.” Cas squeezed Dean’s hand as much as he could. “You have Sam and Bobby-”

“Fuck Bobby.” Dean’s face twisted up into something ugly and angry and pathetic, but Cas just hushed him softly.

“They need you.”

“So do you!”

Cas didn’t bother denying it. “I’ll call you. When the procedure is done, I’ll call you.”

 

**Eighteen**

 

Cas didn’t call.

 

**Twenty Three**

 

“Zachariah said you were dead.”

“And what, you just believed him?” Dean spat out, disbelief granting him words.

“He took me to your - to  _a_ grave. He bought the plot next to your parents’, made a -” Cas swallowed, and that was when Dean noticed that he was shaking.

Fuck.

“By the time I found out he was lying, I couldn’t find you. And I  _looked_. I hired a private investigator, I talked to Bobby and Sam and - you just disappeared, Dean.”

 

**Twenty Two**

 

He left with his clothes and his car, leaving a note behind. He couldn’t take Sam saying that shit to him, not when Sam was leaving for Stanford in a week.

Not when five years ago today Cas had-

Hadn’t called.

 

**Twenty Three**

 

It never took them long to get from fighting to kissing, and when Dean bit out anI’m sorry it was just the natural progression of events.

Later, when they were tacky with drying sweat and cum and tears Dean would say it again.

And again.

And then a few more times, because it was so much better than saying it to a stained and faded photograph.

**Author's Note:**

> on tumblr at [this gorgeous blog ;)](ang3lba3.tumblr.com)


End file.
